


In Between

by Antarc



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Injury Recovery, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:55:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26049151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antarc/pseuds/Antarc
Summary: There’s a dead fly on the windowsill.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 11
Kudos: 46





	In Between

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion piece to [I Picked Those Cherries Just for You.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25736545)
> 
> It's rather dark, so if you need a pick-me-up, just know that it's gonna get better.

There’s a dead fly on the windowsill.

Its body is a fat, dark blob against the white backdrop, its limbs stretched towards the empty sky glimpsed through the window above. Immobile.  
Billy hates it with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. Wishes he could burn the fly out of existence just with his gaze.

He can’t really move, can barely lift his head on his own or get enough breath into his lungs to speak. He might be going a little bit crazy in his hospital room and this _goddamn fly_ has been dead on the windowsill for days now.

It’s hard to keep track of time. He’s constantly on pain meds and sedatives, doses light during the day so that he’s lucid enough to spend what little energy he has on answering questions for an hour every morning. At night, they give him the full dose, make him so numb and drowsy that there’s nothing left but giving in to unconsciousness. He wouldn’t call it sleep.

In between, he has hours upon hours to kill. Daily examinations of his body. Getting cleaned and moved like he’s a human-sized doll, whether he wants to or not. A TV on the other side of the room, turned so low he has trouble understanding what’s being said. Most of the time, he ignores the noise entirely and makes up his own plotlines and conversations in his head. Entire kingdoms have broken apart and come back together in his imagination, and yet he’s still strapped to a hospital bed and there’s still a dead fly on the windowsill.

The fly was let in on one of the days Steve came around to visit. He’d ripped open the window, let in the sweltering, humid summer heat and dragged Billy’s bed next to it. Laid down close to Billy’s prone form, pressed his head against his shoulder and sighed into Billy’s ear. Wrapped an arm around him, careful, so, so careful of his healing wounds.

Steve had dark rings under his eyes. Looked sad and soft and Billy could just lie there and let the warm breeze from the window wash over them, caressing their skin like he wanted to touch Steve back. Feather-light and steady. Through the dull pulse of pain in his chest and sides and limbs, that is his constant companion during the day, he could get a glimpse of something like real calm.

And then they’d made Steve leave again. Closed the window and left Billy alone in his room with his thoughts. Except there was one thing that had joined him: The goddamn _fucking_ fly. 

He slept through the night, unbothered by its buzzing simply due to the sedatives, but the next morning he woke to the incessant buzzing and tap-tap-tapping of its body slamming against the window pane. Again. And again. And. Again.

No one seemed to notice it. Throughout the entire day, Billy would watch and listen as it continued to switch between searching the room for an exit or mindlessly slamming itself against the window in a maddening, endless cycle.

The worst part was when it decided to land on Billy’s arms, prone on top of his sheets. When he could feel its tiny limbs walk across his skin, up towards his shoulder. Unable to lift his arms in time to slap it away, as it would walk onto his face. He’d shake it off and it would fly away for a moment, just to come back again. It made him want to scream, made him want to yell at the nurses who’d come into his room and scare the fly off of him, just to leave and watch it return to its endless circling of the room and his body.

A day later, it was dead.

And now it’s still dead and still just as trapped as Billy. It might have gotten to know the room just as well as he has, in its prowling of every surface and corner, like somehow there’d be a magic portal to the outside revealed if they just searched long enough.

Maybe he’ll end up just as dead in front of the window, before he ever feels the wind on his skin and the sun on his face again. He wants to breathe air that smells of forest and yes, even fucking cow dung. Anything, anything at all to release him from this hell.


End file.
